User talk:Veenalin/sandbox

Assignment 1: Anaerobic Respiration

Overall, I found the Wikipedia article on anaerobic respiration to be an adequate introduction to the subject with a clear structure and a neutral tone. However, there are three areas in which I think the article could improve.

Firstly, there are not enough references listed in the article. Although Wikipedia suggests including at least one reference per paragraph, both the three-paragraph long introduction and first section only list one reference each. Many claims are not supported by citations, which decreases the article’s reliability and definitely contributes to its “Start” class evaluation. For example, Anaerobic Respiration could be cited as a resource for an overview of anaerobic respiration and its ecological importance. That being said, all of the references that are cited are from recently published, independent academic journals and there is no evidence of close paraphrasing.

Secondly, the article goes into the same depth of detail in describing fermentation as it does anaerobic respiration in the first section of the article. Instead of focusing on comparing the two processes, I feel that the article should begin by explaining anaerobic respiration first in a way that can be more easily understood by people without biology backgrounds, since it is the topic of the article. This overrepresentation of fermentation is discussed a lot on the article’s talk page but does not seem to have been resolved yet.

Finally, the article does not include a single diagram, which would be useful in helping Wikipedia readers better understand the content.

Veenalin (talk) 05:23, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Assignment 2: Geobacter

Geobacter is a topic of high notability – and an important one too, considering Geobacter’s significance in bioremediation. Not only are there nearly six hundred journal articles on this bacterial species in the past twelve months alone in the UBC library online database, but these sources are also from well-known academic journals, such as Nature Nanotechnology and Applied and Environmental Microbiology. In addition, these journals are independent of the subject in that they are not motivated to write about Geobacter for reasons of self-publicity or advertising.

Unfortunately, for a topic that has received such significant coverage, the Wikipedia page for Geobacter is poorly written and lacking in material. For example, the “History” section has only two sentences while one of the headings under the “Applications” section has only one sentence. There is very little description of Geobacter species, such as the fact that it is a rod-shaped bacterium that stains Gram-negative. There is also no explanation of its metabolism, other than one sentence citing that it uses anaerobic respiration. Overall, the article does not allow the reader to fully understand what makes Geobacter unique and important.

Specifically, something that I would like to add to the article is a new section under the “Applications” section on Geobacter’s biofilm conductivity and what this means for environmental microbiology. This will improve the article by expanding on why and how Geobacter can be used for sustainable energy and bioremediation processes. In addition, this is a topic that has been widely supported in many recent research papers. Malvankar et al. proposed that the high conductivity of Geobacter’s biofilm can be used to power microbial fuel cells. One specific species of Geobacter, G. sulfureducens, holds one of the highest records for microbial fuel cell current density that we have ever been able to measure in a laboratory. Many researchers are currently studying how we can utilize biofilm conductivity to our advantage to produce even higher current densities.

Veenalin (talk) 05:24, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Veena's Peer Review
Reviewed by thomash1

The author adds a new passage on Geobacter biofilm conductivity, which is very appropriately included in the Applications section. However, the previous subsection focuses mostly on Geobacter metabolism and environmental clean-up capabilities. This topic transitions more naturally into the existing Biodegradation and Bioremediation passage, which expands on how metabolism can be utilized to break down pollutants. Thus, the Biofilm Conductivity section should be added afterwards to avoid disjointing the article.

The passage’s content is factual and supported by the selected literature, which the author summarizes succinctly. Though she mentions extracellular cytochromes as an electrogenic mechanism in microbial fuel cell function, I would suggest adding how these cytochromes can associate with pili to form nanowires, as mentioned in Bond et al. The literature explains how these conductive pili then transfer electrons to anodes to generate current, which is worth mentioning in the article.

The author excels in maintaining a neutral tone and logical writing flow. Her writing structure helps highlight the importance of Geobacter electrogenicity. For instance, her explanation of the conductive biofilm helps the reader understand its subsequent use in microbial fuel cells. By building on how electrogenicity can be optimized through manipulating redox gradients, she uses effective writing structure to emphasize this innovative potential.

Although the majority of her claims are supported by citations, there are a few statements missing references. For instance, her claims that Geobacter can facilitate extracellular electron transfer using cytochromes (the first two sentences) would benefit from citations, specifically from the Bond et al article referenced later. However, the claims that are referenced are supported by their respective articles and all four articles are represented equally. A final comment would be to include a source explaining difficulties, drawbacks and reasons why microbial fuel cells are not yet a mainstream electricity-generating process.

Thomash1 (talk) 00:53, 9 November 2017 (UTC)